


under the mask

by ElasticElla



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3363383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/pseuds/ElasticElla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate decides to use Violet rather than kill her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	under the mask

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HolyGuacomole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolyGuacomole/gifts).



> You had so many awesome ships and prompts, but I had to go Kate/Violet for your main gift. (and Garrett snuck in somehow) I hope you like it <3
> 
> And a giant thank you to [queerkira](http://queerkira.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing!

Violet's trapped in a small dank space, her wrists are bound before her and she's feeling a bit queasy. She hadn't expected to live, much less to be transported somewhere. The claws had flashed when she didn't know the answer, curling into a fist at the last moment.

Garrett's gone, but she can't feel more than a twinge of relief at that. He had been last on her list, an easy way to double her earnings- he would have never seen it coming, the trusting, loving, moron. She pretends she doesn’t miss him.

She doesn't know about the others, and she doesn't care. All she needs to do is get out of this alive, and she'll be set forever. She'll never want for anything, never go hungry, and never go back again. With fuzzy thoughts of the future, the car rocks her back to sleep.

She half wakes up minutes or hours later. Violet remembers the last time she was locked in a trunk, remembers crawling into the backseat and choking the driver, diving out of the car before it crashed. Her knees are still scarred from the pavement, her fingers twitching in their bindings. She can hear the jaguar's laughter ringing in her ears, mocking and high-pitched. Even if the backseat went down to expose the trunk, she'd be dead long before her hands closed around the woman's neck.

The certainty allows her to relax in her bonds. She drifts back to sleep wondering if any of the other Orphans ever got into supernatural trouble. She doubts they'd get out alive.

.

_'I tried to save you.'_

_His voice is flat and peculiar, coming from all directions. She can't see him; there's only the pavement beneath her feet, and she runs._

_'Why wouldn't you let me save you?'_

.

Violet wakes up in a cell. It's much creepier than the jail cell- bones everywhere, and moonlight casting an extra eerie glow. She's no longer bound, and her wrists appreciate that. The jaguar could be back in any moment though, and certainly knows she's awake. Violet paws through the bones until she comes across a femur with a sharp edge. It could do, especially if she ground down the other side to even it out and-

"Already up and at ‘em, what a busy little beaver you are."

Kate opens the door, and Violet wonders if it’s a trap. But it doesn’t matter, she thinks, recalling her training. She had to minimize her fear- she had to survive. Violet walks out of the cage, and Kate shuts the door behind her. 

“Time to meet your new friends.”

Kate brings her to an empty room, dim with even more scattered bones. Violet really isn’t digging the decor, and loud crunching draws her eyes to the doorway. There are two berserkers, and Violet doesn’t tremble. If Kate wanted her dead, she would be. Logic, she thinks, logic can still save me. 

“Thing 1 and Thing 2,” Kate says with a handwave. “They don’t need to eat anymore, but we do. Are you hungry?” 

“I am,” Violet answers. 

Kate growls suddenly, and Violet only just avoids jumping, all the hairs on her neck standing straight up. One of the berserkers leaves, the other remaining creepily in the corner. It draws Violet’s eyes to a mask hanging on the wall- one identical to the ones the berserkers have. She feels sick, but remembers Kate implied she would need food- that had to be a good sign. Violet ignores the voice in the back of her head that says it’s only to keep her complacent, complacent prisoners are easier to keep.

The berserker comes back with food, awkwardly holding a platter. It’s odd to see a killing machine reduced to a mere servant. It’s clearly a show of power- though why, she isn’t sure. But it seems like Kate is trying to impress or scare her.

“Eat,” Kate says, her voice cutting through the silence.

Violet grabs a sandwich, pretending it isn’t weird that the berserker is just standing there like a faithful waiter. It’s chicken salad, and delicious, and she tries not to think about where it may have come from. After all, she was an Orphan, there isn’t any higher moral ground for her to claim.

Kate watches her eat silently, and then sends her back to the cell. 

“You’re not strong enough yet, maybe tomorrow.” 

The jaguar is gone before Violet can ask for what, and she figures she won’t be getting particularly strong in her new creepy den of bones. Violet spends a few hours reorganizing the bones- rounded, whole ones for where she’ll sleep and the broken, sharp ones for impromptu weapons. They won’t do much against the supernatural of course, but knowing her luck, this would be the time the Orphans finally track her down. 

She wishes Garrett was here. They always thought they’d face them together.

.

_“I don’t want to play some child’s game. I want to find the bastards that killed my parents and make them pay.”_

_Megan smiled, a shade too condescending for Violet’s liking, “You’re too slow to be a real threat. Once you are quick, you will learn how to fight.”_

_“Fine.”_

_Megan slaps her arm before taking off into the woods, “You’re it!”_

.

Violet falls into her new life easily; she always was good at adapting. She wakes when the sun filters through her tiny ceiling window, reorganizes and counts the bones for a few hours. She stops when one of the berserkers brings her breakfast, and wonders about the Orphans finding her. Later she leaves her cell to have lunch with Kate. When she returns she tries to think of an escape plan, inevitably fails, has dinner that one of the berserkers brings, and goes to sleep. 

A few weeks pass like this, and Violet thinks she’ll never be strong enough for whatever Kate wanted. She hopes that won’t make her disposable, but she’s also getting closer to snapping- there are only so many times she can reorganize her cell and fantasize about escaping. Violet’s never had the time to be bored, not since her parents died. There’s always been someone to track down and kill, something to keep her moving. The static is making her skin itch, and she almost wants to run at lunch just to see what happens. 

When the itch becomes almost too much, Kate says she’s ready. 

.  
 _  
Violet is out of breath and out of fucks to give about this stupid goddamn game of tag. It feels like the fiftieth one this week, and all the other kids still know the forest way better than she does. She’s tearing through the forest, pushing her feet faster, faster. She’s a sweaty mess, but the last time she wiped her face she also wiped out, tripping over a root. She just needs to go a little faster, a little more and she’ll have to catch someone._

_Violet’s grabbed and yanked behind a tree, a hand slapping over her mouth before she can let out a startled scream._

_“Easy,” a low voice by her ear says, “you’ll never catch anyone by stomping through the forest. You need to be more stealthy than quick.”_

_Violet breaks his hold, throwing an elbow backwards, “Well you’re it now!”_

_She dashes deeper into the forest, his chuckle echoing in her ears.  
_  
.

One of the berserkers- and she really should find a way to tell them apart- brings in a chair. Violet’s wondering how fast they can run, she couldn’t outrun Kate but maybe-

“Sit,” Kate says.Violet hesitates for half a second, wondering if the complicit prisoner is really the best angle here. Kate growls though, and Violet is in the chair, pushing her heart rate down to normal. 

Kate drags her fingertip around Violet’s face, tracing the edges, and slowly circling her. “You are going to go in and out of the mask, we’re going to see,” Kate pauses behind her and mouth next to her ear, breath too hot, and a terrible feeling of vulnerability smothering Violet- she thought she outgrew that emotion years ago. She continues, voice silky, “How much you can survive.” 

And Violet honestly doesn’t know which is worse- the assumed or actual. She thought she would lose her mind all at once, would become one of the follower berserkers in a blink. What if she loses hers in bits and pieces? Just chunks deteriorating at seemingly random intervals- what if her memory’s gone? Anger wraps around her tightly, she’s spent _years_ perfecting herself. And now this woman might destroy it all for some science project. 

Violet’s back is rigid, and Kate smiles. “My little warrior.” 

Violet barely has any time for disgust, Kate’s hands descending with the mask. The moment it’s on, Violet’s disoriented. Her senses and strength are heightened- she could easily snap the chair she’s sitting on, she knows she could. 

Kate moves away from her slowly, and her voice is perfectly clear, “Get up.” 

And Violet does, snapping up without thought. Her center of gravity is off, she feels heavier somehow. Her vision is off too, white spots swarming before her eyes but it doesn’t worry her. Nothing does. 

In fact she isn’t even sure who ‘her’ is. There’s a faint thread connecting them, taunt and irksome. A hand comes up to swat it away, halfway through the motion the mask is ripped off, and Violet feels roughly slammed back into herself.

Kate’s head is cocked, “Ten seconds, not a very good start.”

Everything is going dark, her eyelids feel heavy, and the promise of oblivion has never been so bittersweet. 

“No, not nearly strong enough yet.”

.  
 _  
“It doesn’t matter who you were out there. That girl couldn’t save her parents, and definitely couldn’t avenge them.”_

_“But my-”_

_“No. You’re not her anymore, grow up. Evolve.”  
_  
.

One of the berserkers is gone, dead, Violet assumes. She’s terrified Kate’s going to just leave the mask on, that she’s going to forget herself.

But someone new comes in that day, a man presumedly from the nearby city, “A replacement chump.”

Violet wants to vomit from the sudden relief. 

.  
 _  
Meg is pleased. “You shed yourself and learnt quick. You’re ready.”_

_There’s a file, photographs of her parents’ murder scene inside and an address._

_“You can take one with you or go alone.”_

_She takes the boy from the forest._

_His name is Garrett._

_They work together well, and are a few states over quickly. The address is in Alabama, and Violet can’t figure out how these people knew her parents. Rage wins over logic when she sees them, killing them all before Garrett comes up through the basement._

_It doesn’t make her feel any better, and Garrett helps her wipe down the room. She pockets, presumably, the wife’s diary. They’re back at HQ a few days later, and the entire thing feels anticlimactic._

_She fakes a smile for the suspicions churning in her gut.  
_  
.

Wearing the mask doesn’t get any easier with time, only stranger. 

Once, she had trouble holding herself. Now, she has trouble holding her memories. 

Chasing Kate, she’s supposed to catch her- and the woman turns into Garrett, and he’s chasing her. Fighting another berserker turns into fighting Meg, and all the words mesh together. Kate says none of the others reacted like this, none of the other Orphans cared about it. What’s wrong with you Violet? 

In her bed of bones, she carefully pulls apart her thoughts sorting them into past and present, real and imagined. The knots get more and more complex, and once it’s done she’s sure she’ll succumb to the mask. 

She can almost last two minutes now. 

The pride in Kate’s eyes shouldn’t warm her.

.  
 _  
“Meg did it,” she says, once they’re far, far away from any prying ears._

_“Did what?” Garrett asks, skipping a stone across the lake._

_“She’s been killing the parents! It makes so much more sense now.”_

_“I know… most of us suspect, I think.”_

_Violet takes the next stone from his hand, chucking it into the water. “Why don’t you do anything?”_

_Garrett’s eyes are hard, “People try, one or two a year- they always die.”_

_“What about-”_

_“Three years ago, right after I was brought in, a dozen rebelled. They thought they’d be safe with so many of them- half had been here the longest besides Meg, they all bought in millions in bounties. She shot each of them before they could run or fight or beg.”  
_  
.

“Do you want the bite?” 

Violet would have spit out her water if Kate had asked half a second sooner, instead her eyebrows pop without permission. “No?”

Kate shrugs, “You might last longer, or shorter- I’ve never put one under.” 

Nothing more is said on the subject, and Violet isn’t sure what to think.

.  
 _  
“What happens if someone wants to leave?”_

_“Do you?”_

_“You killed my parents.”_

_“I unlocked your potential.”_

_“Answer my question.”_

_Meg laughs. “Oh, kitty thinks she has claws now. Well darling, we’d hunt you. Everyone that’s tried have all died within a day. You are, of course, welcome to test your own luck.”  
_  
.

A berserker interrupts their lunch, and Violet feels a twinge of annoyance. It conveys something in its deep growls, and Kate is up a moment later, claws flashing and face flickering. 

“If I’m not back in five minutes, put the mask on.”

.  
 _  
Meg wasn’t her first kill, not even close. But it was the first time Violet enjoyed killing.  
_  
.

Violet is trying not to panic. She knows if an attacker reaches her, the mask is her best bet of survival. But to willingly put it on, to do so without Kate tying the strings, is unimaginable even now. It’s heavy in her hands, and she knows more than five minutes have passed. 

Someone’s at the front wall, breaking it in probably. With a deep breath, Violet puts it on. 

The intruder could be anyone, and wears Meg’s face. 

“I knew you would betray us. You never cared about the other Orphans, you selfish, selfish little girl.” 

Violet tries to deny it, some part of it, but only a roar passes her lips- and Meg attacks. 

.  
 _  
“We don’t have to do this anymore, we could just be normal high school kids.”_

_Violet laughs, hands looped behind his neck. “And is that what you really want? A boring minimal existence, hiding in the shadows?”_

_Garrett kisses her, softer than usual and quick. “I want what you do.”_

_Violet’s grin is sharp, “I’d rather die in silk.”  
_  
.

Kate comes in when the body drops.

She pulls off the mask and kisses her quickly. Violet’s barely back in her skin before she’s out of it again- Kate is _kissing_ her. It’s ridiculous and chaotic, tastes a little too good, and maybe if there weren’t people trying to kill them Violet would laugh. 

Kate pulls back, the mask strangely frail looking in her hands, “Run. I’ll find you.” 

And Violet runs away from the church, away from Kate, away from whoever found them, away from twisted memories, away from everything. The dusty air sticks in the back of her throat but she doesn’t stop or wheeze, this is her out. If she runs fast enough, hides her scent well enough, she might just get back to civilization, and finally play with all the money sitting in her account. 

Violet runs faster, a wild grin across cracked lips. _You’re it, you’re it, you’re it._


End file.
